PS3 Top Gun mixes old movie with older gameplay

Want to know what happens if you take a by-the-numbers arcade-style flying …

The film version of Top Gun is filled with epic dogfights, testosterone-infused volleyball games, and Tom Cruise before he became whatever he is today. It's a classic that's slightly cheesy, but still fun as hell to watch and quote. Then you play the PlayStation Network Top Gun release and you hear the following: "Negative, Ghostrider. There is too much traffic."

Really? REALLY? This is the Goose's response when IceMan tells Maverick he is dangerous. "That's right, we are dangerous! If you don't like you can go home and pull the covers up over your head!"

Here's how the game works: you play a generic mission, and then a scene from the film is shoe-horned in with terrible voice acting and an oddly rewritten script. Then you play another mission.

That was some of the best flying I've seen to date, right up to the part where you got killed

It feels like the version of Top Gun that Roger Corman would have directed. The gameplay itself is nothing special, with mediocre graphics, the same destroy-everything-you're-told mission structure we've seen in a dozen other arcade-style flight games, and a plane that's equipped with a health bar. That's right, you can soak a whole lot of missiles before anything bad happens. I'm used to games like H.A.W.X. where you can take down multiple enemies, but in Top Gun you can only target one thing at a time. So if you're locked onto a ground target, you fire a missile... and then wait until that target is blown up before you can lock onto anything else. It might be realistic—I've never flown one of these planes—but combined with the boring flight mechanics, it draws the missions out longer than needed. This isn't a game, it's a chore.

The controls feel stiff, the story jumps all over the place while mangling famous quotes, and I couldn't find anyone playing online. Basically, there isn't much fun to be had here. For $15 it's not even worth laughing at the terrible dialogue. Sadly, Top Gun seems dead on arrival.